As a small-town mayor, Steve Lonegan won both admirers and enemies across the state by trying to have English declared his community's official language, announcing he wouldn't support civil unions for gay couples, fighting rate increases on toll roads and suing the state government over how much money it was borrowing.
But it wasn't making noise about those conservative values that first took him to borough hall.
It was quieting jets.
Trying to make Teterboro Airport a better neighbor was a cause that ran though the 12 years he spent as mayor of Bogota, a town of about 8,000 residents just north of Newark. It didn't get the same attention as some of the others, but it's a prime example of his willingness to take on powerful foes , in this case, the airport's owner, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which runs major transit hubs in both states and owns the World Trade Center site.
Lonegan, who has lost elections for state Senate, U.S. representative and governor, is in the Republican gubernatorial primary against former U.S. Attorney Chris Christie on Tuesday. Christie is the darling of the state's relatively moderate Republican hierarchy, and recent polls show him far ahead of Lonegan among likely voters. Assemblyman Richard Merkt also is in the race.
Lonegan, who then owned a cabinet manufacturing company, said he first became interested in local politics in the mid-1990s, when he went to borough hall to complain about noise from Teterboro, a general aviation airport just across the George Washington Bridge from Manhattan.
He said he felt the officials were disrespectful and decided to run for office. In 1995, he was elected mayor of Bogota.
Lonegan never forgot about the airport concerns. But his first act as mayor was announcing he would forgo his $1,500 annual salary.
It turned out to be more than a symbol; it was foreshadowing. He was consistently , and, opponents say, dangerously , stingy when it came to spending.
He left the town with a lower tax rate than when he began as mayor, though it fluctuated while he was in office.
Charles Servino, now the school board president and once a member of the borough council, said Lonegan kept taxes down by not doing projects that needed to be done.
"He didn't do anything," Servino said. "You and I can save a ton of money as a homeowner by not painting it, not doing anything."
Lonegan denies that and says he did more to fix up the town in 12 years than his predecessors did in 50.
He also took on school spending, something that made Servino a foil. Voters in most communities decide on their local school taxes each year. When they reject the school districts' proposals, it's up to the town governments to make cuts.
Twice when Lonegan was mayor, he offered deep cuts and recommended they come out of administrative costs. School officials said the only way costs could be trimmed was by eliminating sports teams.
Both times, the teams were salvaged after standoffs that cast him as a villain to school officials and parents who booed him at fiery public meetings.
"He does not care about public education," Servino said. "If it was up to Steve Lonegan, our kids would be in wooden shacks with candles being educated."
Lonegan, who said he wants private schools to get taxpayer money to create competition with a public education system he sees as bloated and ineffective in many communities, insists he was in the right on the budgets.
He also battled with the police union over the suggestion that uniformed officers be replaced with civilian dispatchers. The force of fewer than 20 officers worked without a contract for most of Lonegan's first four-year term.
In 1998, Bergen County prosecutor William Schmidt sent Lonegan a letter warning that cutting the police force in Bogota as the New York Police Department, the nation's largest, ramped up anti-drug efforts would "push drug dealers and other criminals across the George Washington Bridge and into Bergen County."
Lonegan bristled and, in his typically combative fashion, questioned whether Schmidt was qualified for his job.
The mayor felt the state-appointed prosecutor was trying to meddle in town business. Keeping the state government out of towns is another theme of Lonegan's campaign.
Schmidt said he believes Lonegan's effort to hire civilians for the job was an effort to do right by taxpayers. Eventually, civilian dispatchers were hired.
"When you believe passionately about something, you might have the tendency to be very assertive," Schmidt said recently. "And he's very assertive."
As mayor, Lonegan waded into topics that local officials don't normally address. He says it was important to use his position of power to speak out on issues that matter to him.
In 2007, the state began allowing gay couples to join in civil unions, which offer the legal protections of marriage. He objected to the unions and said he would go against an opinion of the state attorney general and refuse to perform the ceremonies. The issue petered out for an unsurprising reason: No gay couple asked Lonegan to do a ceremony.
Another of his quests got him national attention. In 2006, when tensions were boiling over on illegal immigration, McDonald's put up a billboard in Spanish in his Democratic-leaning town, where about one-fifth of the residents have Hispanic heritage.
After some residents complained, Lonegan demanded the billboard be removed.
When McDonald's refused, Lonegan proposed making English the town's official language. He wanted to put it to a public vote, but the county clerk wouldn't allow it on the ballot.
Lonegan also led a campaign that defeated a 2007 ballot measure that would have let the state borrow money for stem cell research and organized protests last year of Democratic Gov. Jon S. Corzine's proposed toll hikes for the New Jersey Turnpike and Garden State Parkway. He even filed a lawsuit to curtail state borrowing, but the state Supreme Court rejected his argument by a 4-3 vote in 2003.
Those efforts and others have made Lonegan a hero among the state's right.
Seth Grossman, who hosts a radio show in Ocean City, called Lonegan the most exciting leader the GOP has had in generations.
"People who don't take Steve Lonegan seriously or dismiss him don't understand the admiration and loyalty that we have toward Steve Lonegan," Grossman said.
Lonegan has been just as persistent about other local issues.
When freight trains were idling overnight on tracks in his town, he personally ticketed an engine. Eventually, the operator agreed to stop the practice.
Then there were the planes. Lonegan organized officials in several area towns and pressured a change in flight patterns that cut down on some of the noise. He also filed a lawsuit that resulted in the Port Authority and the state agreeing to pay for a study of the airport's environmental impact.
Stuart Lieberman, the lawyer Lonegan hired for the coalition of towns, said Lonegan was essential in the legal battle.
"Once he makes up his mind about something, he really sticks with it," Lieberman said. "He doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who forms an opinion and it's temporary."
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